Here’s CrowdStrike to remind you what could have been.
A massive IT outage that disturbed Microsoft customers and businesses across the world on Friday caused flight delays and cancellations at Houston airports, led to the temporary closure of Port Houston and forced Texas A&M University to cancel classes.
The far-reaching outages stemmed from a faulty software update for the Texas-based cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike. It affected users of Microsoft Windows from Sugar Land to Germany to India.
The company said the problem did not stem from a security incident or a cyberattack, though it later warned hackers may try to take advantage of the technical issues.
“The system was sent an update, and that update had a software bug in it, and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system,” CrowdStrike CEO and President George Kurtz said on the TODAY Show. “And we identified this very quickly, and remediated the issue, and as systems come back online as they’re rebooted, they’re coming up and they’re working.”
Affected users opened their computers to find what’s known as the “blue screen of death,” with a message that read: “It looks like Windows didn’t load correctly.” CrowdStrike boasts nearly 300 of the Fortune 500 companies as customers, and the outage led five airlines to ground all flights for a time.
In Houston, the outages briefly shut down the city’s ports, among the largest in the world, on Friday morning. It affected computers at Houston’s airports, along with operating systems for United and American airlines, leading to flight delays and cancellations.
Harris Health System, the region’s safety net system for poor and uninsured residents, canceled most elective procedures and shuttered outpatient clinics Friday morning. And Texas A&M nixed classes as it dealt with its own effects.
The outage did not affect local 911 operations or Houston police, nor did it hinder CenterPoint Energy, Houston’s electricity provider, as the company continued its effort to restore customers who lost power during Hurricane Beryl 11 days earlier. As of Friday afternoon, the company had reduced the number of customers without power to less than 4,000.
By the afternoon, many systems returned to normal and airlines resumed operations, trying to catch up on schedule interruptions. In the afternoon, Kurtz said the company had mobilized all of its resources to help customers restore service.
For the record, my team uses CrowdStrike quite a bit. It’s a great tool for cyber security. We’re not the ones responsible for fixing it at our workplace, but I spent a bunch of time on conference calls with those who are. Mostly I’m glad it didn’t make any lingering effects from Beryl worse. Hope your Friday wasn’t too badly affected by this.